But Laraine Wright, who retired from the Carbondale campus after an 18-year career, asked why there hasn’t been progress sooner. Wright, a former publications director in the university relations office, brought up her concerns at a board of trustees meeting in February.

She says she was surprised when she received a university mailing and discovered that all the people at the top tier were men.

“It’s just an exclusive male club that built up over the years and no one was paying any attention,” she says. “It says that women are not important and don’t count for anything.”

The highest ranking woman in SIUC’s history was Dr. Jo Ann E. Argersinger, who became chancellor in 1998. She was fired a year later by the board of trustees after the university president complained about her management style and accused her of sowing dissension between employees and the administration. Hundreds of faculty members staged a rally to protest Argersinger’s ouster.

On the Edwardsville campus, which has 14,000 students, women are represented in the top ranks. Of the eight deans, three are women.

Dr. Jacqueline E. King, co-author of ACE’s national study on women and minorities in senior leadership, says there is a strong pool of female candidates available to universities. She called the lack of women in SIUC leadership “atypical.”

“The percentage of women earning Ph.D.s has been on the rise,” she says. “You’ve seen women making strides through the academy and this has worked its way up.” In terms of being racially diverse, SIUC also stands out — but in a positive way. The chancellor of Carbondale, Dr. Fernando M. Treviño, is Hispanic. SIUC’s vice chancellor and law school dean are Black; the engineering college’s dean is Asian. Edwardsville has a vice chancellor and a dean who are Asian.

Nationally, there are fewer people of color in senior leadership posts. Universities report that it is harder for them to find racially diverse candidates than to find White women candidates.